Many people who travel do not ultimately pay for their travel related expenses. For example, the expenses of a person traveling for work-related matters are often paid by the person's employer. Likewise, the expenses of a lecturer who travels from one city to another are often paid by a sponsoring organization or group in each city. Ordinarily, in order for these travelers to be reimbursed for all of their expenses, they are required to obtain and keep paper receipts, which must be submitted to the ultimate payer. In many cases, if a traveler lost or, alternately, did not obtain a paper receipt for a particular expense, the payer would not reimburse for the expense.
Furthermore, in addition to submitting the receipts, a traveler was often required to fill out a detailed expense report. Before reimbursing the traveler, the ultimate payer would review the receipts and detailed expense report to ensure that all expenses were legitimate and/or fell within appropriate guidelines, such as, a maximum dollar amount for dinner. After reimbursing the traveler, the ultimate payer was then required to maintain a record of the receipts for tax purposes. Consequently, the prior method of processing travel-related expenses was extremely burdensome, time-consuming, and inefficient.